Let me in, I'm staaahving!

Today I took a bus to the Cadbury Chocolate Factory, and it was awesome. As soon as you stepped off the bus the air smelled like chocolate. The people going on the tour were herded into a room and told to remove all jewelry. I didn't want to take out my earring, and so the little old lady giving the tour snuck up behind me and put tape on it. In the process, she somehow managed to tape my glasses onto my ear. Then, she made us all wear hair nets. Thus decked out, we began our tour.

Everywhere you walked there were machines wrapping chocolate and chocolate riding on conveyer belts and fruit getting covered in chocolate. It was very busy! I can't say much more about it, because it was essentially just a factory.

Afterwards we ended up at the Cadbury bargain store, which was awful because they sold 'defect' chocolate that did not meet weight specifications (but was otherwise normal) for $6 for three blocks (one block is normally $2.95). I also got a huge bag of Freddo Frogs. Then I sent them all away as gifts, because I am the nicest person ever.

I met some incredibly nice people on the tour, and we all drove back to Hobart. They were very funny and I was so happy I met them! Meeting people is always good.

Other than that, today was pretty boring for you to hear about. I wandered along the waterfront, where there were floating fish and chip shops, and around Elizabeth Mall, an outdoor pedestrian mall with lots of shops. I bought shirts. I really didn't need more things, but there you go.

Starting tomorrow I am going to be travelling all around Tasmania with Adventure Tours Australia for six days. I will try my best to update, but I'm not sure how often that will be. It should be amazing, though. I will let you know all about it as soon as I can.

Kangaroo Island Day 2

I was apparently so tired yesterday I forgot to mention that I went sandboarding on the white dunes on KI known as Little Sahara. So, I did that, also.

Onto day two of Kangaroo Island!

We got to sleep in a little bit, not leaving until 8:30. Our first stop was a patch of trees that the koalas liked, and we saw one with her joey. How sleepy.


After the exciting koalas, we went on to Admiral's Arch. It was very, very windy and we were afraid of blowing over into the ocean. Thankfully, this did not happen. What happened instead was that we saw the arch and a huge colony of New Zealand Fur Seals. Can you see them in the next two pictures? They are very dark and tend to look a lot like the rocks. They are cute, though; we saw them playing in the waves.

After Admiral's Arch we went on to the part I was most looking forward to: the Remarkable Rocks. They were, in fact, quite remarkable! I am now wishing I had different pictures up, but alas, I do not :( I can't add the pictures I like better, either, because now I am at a hostel and can't connect my computer up to the internet, so you will just have to live with these and see the rest when I come home. Harry Potter (er, Daniel Ratcliffe) recently filmed a movie on KI, which strongly features the Remarkable Rocks. So now if you see the movie, you can say, hey, I know of that place! Also: green jacket with oversized white t-shirt is always a good fashion choice.

The weather cleared up just as we left the rocks, just in time for our hike! We saw lots of kangaroos and sand goannas, which tried to kill you by digging many shallow holes right in the middle of the path, little buggers. The hike ran parallel to a river, and we stopped on the bank many times to look for a platypus, but alas, no such luck. They are apparently very, very shy. We did see platypus bubbles: air that is released from the fur as they are diving. That sentence is not grammatically correct, but I am too upset about not seeing a platypus to care.

We spent about an hour on the beach before hiking back out. Once again, no swimming because people are actually quite regularly eaten by sharks around the island. Sucks. After the hike we went back to the visitor centre to make lunch, and then quickly looked at a paleontological dig-in-progress that was uncovering giant marsupials similar to wombats except the size of cars. It was pretty neat. Then we drove all the way back across the island, caught the ferry, and headed back to Adelaide.

I had a fantastic night with my friends Soxi and Cindy, and Soxi gave me a small book with great photos of Australian wildlife because she is amazing. She and Cindy then drove me to the airport and came with me to my gate to say goodbye. It was very sad leaving Adelaide for good; I still feel like I'm just on a short vacation and then I'll be going back. At least I will see them again soon: they are planning a trip around the States for three months beginning in June!

So after a two hour flight I am now here in Hobart, Tasmania. I am quite far south; the sun juuust went away and it is 10 at night. I saw Hobart from the plane and sort of immediately knew I would love it. It is surrounded on one side by forested mountains and on the other by a river. It is small and quiet and hilly and green and full of old red brick and Victorian buildings. I cannot tell if I love it so much because it reminds me of Ponsonby, the neighbourhood I stayed in in Auckland which I adored, but that doesn't matter. I didn't get here until about 5, so I went out for a slice of pizza and then saw a dumb Ben Stiller movie. I have the whole day tomorrow to explore Hobart, which shouldn't take long because it's kind of small. I plan on going to the Cadbury Chocolate factory, where they take you on a guided tour and give you lots of free samples and then you end up in a bargain store and become fat. I will try my best not to fall into a chocolate river.

Kangaroo Island Day 1: The Pirates of Pinniped

Blargh. A lot of stuff happened and it was a great trip but I'm just sooooo exhausted. So here are pictures and not a whole lot of exposition; I'm really sorry about that.

So I woke up at 6 in the morning to move out of my room and leave with a tour for Kangaroo Island. It was pretty awesome immediately because the tour guide was an ecotourism major at Flinders and so we could say a lot of scientific words about animals to each other. Also, we had the same taste in music. Also, he was cute.

Anyway, everyone else was really friendly and nice as well. We drove about an hour and a half to the ferry, and after a forty-five minute ride (during which we saw colourful Common Dolphins) we arrived at Kangaroo Island. We stopped for a picnic lunch and then walked to this beautiful beach that happened to be infested with sharks and so we couldn't swim. Boo.

Afterwards we went to Seal Bay, which houses a huge number of endangered Australian Sea Lions. It was the end of pupping season and there were lots and lots of babies waddling around. There is a mom with her flipper over her pup on the left side of this picture. Awww. Also, we saw males fighting and one actually flipped another over. Oooh. We got to walk along the beach with a guide and get pretty close to them.



After Seal Bay we went to our accommodation for the night. It was an old farmhouse close to Vivonne Bay. This is the view. In the evening, the field filled up with tons of kangaroos.




After the sun set we went to the beach to see the little penguins come ashore. Now, I know what you are thinking: how many times can I go see little penguins come ashore on this trip? The answer is: twice. We saw them coming up and shown a red light on them. The red light was supposed to not scare them, but nevertheless they became startled and tried running back to the water. One tripped and fell headfirst into a gap in the rocks. Only his little bum and his feet were sticking up, and they were wiggling and wiggling but he couldn't get out. Our guide had to run down to the beach and pull him out by his feet. It was quite the adventure. On our way back we saw that the kangaroos had been replaced by small Tammar wallabies; the fields were literally hopping with them.

At this point it was getting pretty late, and most of the group went to bed. I went out onto the porch with two other girls, and we were talking and having tea when this round furry blob came up onto the porch and waddled right past us to the grill. It was a brush-tailed possum, and it was BIG. It immediately stuck its head in a pot and started licking off the grease, eventually upturning it and becoming stuck. The possum was smarter than the penguin, however, and actually found its way out. It was not deterred and continued going through all of our things, completely unafraid of us. Eventually it waddled off into the night and we went to bed.





I am exhausted, and I am going to Tasmania tomorrow, but I promise that I'll finish writing about the trip as soon as I can! Hopefully this will be tomorrow evening.

Brisbane

On our last day we took a bus to Brisbane, the capital city of Queensland. We went there without a plan or a place to stay and arrived around 1 in the afternoon. We eventually found a hostel in the heart of the city that was relatively clean. This took about an hour. It was then that we realised that Ashley had left her camera on the bus. Cue us spending most of the day around the Brisbane Transit Centre.

Despite this, we did manage to walk around the city a bit. It is centred around the Brisbane River. We walked along the river around sunset and then caught a water taxi to a part of the city with nice restaurants, and we ate along the riverfront. So despite the stress of the bulk of the day, we ended up having a nice time. Brisbane was very clean and pretty and was all decorated for Christmas. I cannot get over how all of the decorations include things like snowflakes when it is almost summer.







So now it is 24th November. I am moving out of the dorms today. I will be on Kangaroo Island for the 25th and 26th, and then I am off to Tasmania on the 27th. Yay for travelling, not so yay for leaving Adelaide and all of my friends :( :( :(

Australia Zoo

We had a day in Noosa where we pretty much didn't do anything except lay on the beach and get pummeled by waves, so I'll skip that and go straight to writing about our trip to Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo.

A free bus came to pick us up from Noosa Heads. You could tell it was going to be an awesome day because the bus said 'CRIKEY!!!' really big on the side. We got in and as the bus drove off they immediately began trying to make us cry by showing old Crocodile Hunter episodes. We quickly learned that attempting to make their patrons cry was a recurring theme of the zoo.

Everything in the zoo was very Steve Irwin centred, as he owned and operated the whole thing. There were tons of crocodile enclosures everywhere, and we got to see Aggro, one of the most famous crocs there.

The very first thing we did was feed the elephants! You stood in line and when you got to the front, there was a big Asian elephant. You picked up a piece of fruit from the bucket and held out your hand, and the elephant used its trunk to pick up the fruit directly out of your hand. Then they leave you a present of elephant snot. But it is very cool being up so close to them! I have a picture of myself doing this, but it was taken by the zoo and says PROOF in big letters over part of my face because I am too cheap to pay for a big picture. But you can see everything that's important, namely my faceless body feeding an elephant. All right!

There were also water dragons running around everywhere, and you could get pretty close to them. They were huge and very interested in people.


Water dragon posing for me!

There were also lots and lots of koala enclosures spread throughout the zoo. It seems as if they just fall asleep anywhere and slump into any position.



I wish I was a koala. Sleeping is their job.


D-dinosaur?



One of the highlights of the zoo was seeing the big Wildlife Warriors show, where they did a bunch of animal demonstrations with the main attraction being hand-feeding crocodiles. The guy who was doing the feeding was very cute and we were all glad he was not ingested. Before the show started, they had videos on the big screen of Steve Irwin, and some of Terri and his son and daughter with the various animals in the zoo. WHY, Australia Zoo?? Do you want to make us miserable??

The tigers were full of sleep, which was a little disappointing. We decided to come back later to see if they ever woke up.

Sometimes there were keepers walking our fellow countrymen American Alligators around on leashes. They would walk and walk and then just collapse onto the ground and not move (the alligators, not the keepers). This is when people (such as myself) would go over and pet them (the alligators, not the keepers). I have a picture, but it is a PROOF picture so you will have to wait to see it.


Oh man, can echidnas be ANY cuter??? I submit no! Look, this one is even waving! Aww, hello little echidna! How are you today? Are you enjoying being a monotreme? I embarrassed Ashley by saying these things to them when we reached their enclosure. In person, they waddle. Little waddling echidnas. I have the sincere hope that I see one in the wild, and I have a pretty good chance of seeing one on Kangaroo Island. I'm crossing my fingers!



There were plenty of walk-through kangaroo enclosures, and I never miss the opportunity to take ridiculous close-up pictures of Skippy. I can't help it; they're silly.

Little wombat, munching away. Actually, they're not that little, they're about the size of a beaver. But with a pouch. And that lives in subterranean tunnels.

After the wombats we went back to the tigers, who were awake this time because they were being fed milk by their keepers. They would stand up on their hind legs to reach it, and were way taller than the people feeding them. I was pretty sure I was going to see someone get eaten, which would definitely have been the highlight of the trip, but alas, no such thing.

The zoo was almost closing by that point, so we ran back to the courtesy bus and watched a video of Steve Irwin getting attacked by komodo dragons until we got back to Noosa. Oh, Australia Zoo. You fill me with conflicting emotions.

Fraser Island

Sorry this has taken me so long to post! Things have been pretty hectic. I am moving out of the dorms 24th November, and then I'll just be travelling until I meet Mom, Dad, and Emily in a month, so I'm trying to get all packed and everything. Anyway, I will pick up where I left off and now tell you a bit about our trip to Fraser Island!

We got up at 6 AM to catch a day tour to the island, as it is impossible to traverse without a four wheel drive. We drove most of the way to the point on the beach, and passed by a sea turtle that was heading back to sea after laying her eggs. Before we reached the ferry, we stopped at a place called Rainbow Beach that had many different coloured sands.

We soon reached the ferry and drove for about forty-five minutes over the beach, and then we suddenly turned into the mainland. We were surrounded by rainforest on all sides but were driving over white beach sand; here the forest grows directly out of it. Our first stop was Lake McKenzie, which was totally AMAZING. The colours of the lake ran in a gradient from white to deep blue, and the water was incredibly warm. The lake was freshwater, so you could swim around with your eyes open and see the light filtering through. It was also slightly acidic, and our skin and hair were so soft after swimming in it for an hour. We never wanted to get out.



It was impossible to capture on camera, but this picture sort of shows how white the sand was. It was practically blinding in the full sun. I had to adjust the picture so you could even see the sand; the water begins where there is a sort of peachy-colour.


They were really keen on protecting your children from the dingoes. Be dingo-safe!

Apparently, in Australia, even pine cones can KILL YOU. We decided to take our lives in our hands and head into the rainforest anyway. It was totally worth it; the trees grew right out of the sand and there were prehistoric plants everywhere. We totally expected a dinosaur to come crashing through the bush any minute.

This fern is actually growing out of the middle of a stream. That sand you see is the bottom of the creek; that's how clear the water is.



This was going to be my new home, but instead we left the island :(

We got back to Noosa Heads in the early evening and had a nice dinner outside. I am way too tired to write another entry, but I promise that tomorrow I will try to add stuff about the Australia Zoo and Brisbane.